Jon is right with this... Now for my little book....

Since you have State Farm, you are already ahead of the game. Laws vary from state to state but I know New Jersey insurance law provides you with the right to choose your own shop and the parts that go into the car. Ohio is the same. Let me tell you all about my bad experiance.....

I had Progressive Insurance. Not bad, I thought. I figured, good price and a Ohio company. Soooo, I had the silver Accord insured through them. At that time Jen had a PT Cruiser that was also insured by them. Her car got clipped outside her house at the time and she just took it to the Progressive Center by her. They took it and fixed it. When she got it back I was truly surprised at how good the repair was. Perfect paint match. Great body work on the rear quarter. Only flaw was they forgot or neglected to clean out some of the broken hatch glass from the interior panels that caused a rattle. No biggie, the car looked great. So, then some jackass hits my Accord in a parking lot. I get a police report. Call the insurance company and they insure me it will not be a collision claim but a comp claim. That is important, because collision is chargeable and comp isn't. Based on the PT Cruiser, I take the Honda to the same center and pick up my rental. I make it a point to go over every single point of damage. It was actually pretty bad. Split front bumper cover. Damaged fog lights. Bent lower radiator support. Damaged radiator and A/C condenser. Think the moron must have hit it with a trailer hitch. I also noted on their paperwork that only genuine Honda parts were to be used... So, I get the car back and it looks like crap! Mis-fit bumper cover, horrible paint work, aftermarket parts.. Fuming, I tell them that they have to fix it all over again and I'll pick the shop. They then insist that the only thing they will fix is the paint work. That the parts used were Honda. So, I didn't have a good shop at the time so I took it to the dealer that I normally took it to for service. They took one look at it and said "holy !!!, you must be pissed!". They took the insurance information and said they would call me once they inspected the car. They had quite the time with Progressive but soldiered on. They had to totally redo all the work and save all the parts as they went so Progressive could inspect them and confirm that they weren't Honda parts. They had my car for almost two weeks. In the end it was all fixed. It also didn't cost me a dime. They were on the hook for #1) a satisfactory repair (their own guarantee) and #2) the genuine parts (per my written instruction). But the story gets worse....The final conversation with them to say that they could close the claim I double checked that it was in fact a comp claim..And guess what..All of a sudden it was a collision claim! That is when I canceled my policy and moved to Allstate. Thank goodness, since that debacle the only insurance claim we've had is from Jen scrapping up against a parked car. Yes, she did the right thing and found the owner..It was a chargeable claim and Jen's rates went up a bit, but that is what happens.

So, it is very important to make sure that you get a repair shop that you trust. Make sure that the shop only uses genuine parts ( then again, I don't think there are any cheap aftermarket Jaguar body parts out there, but you never know). To this day I still don't have a shop I would take my cars to. The dealer I work with has fixed stuff on their dime that involved paint work. To tell the truth, it is just OK. Nothing I would pay for or choose if I had a choice. Not worth having them keep doing over though. On the other hand...I would love to find a shop like the one I referred you to. Ed's 530i is an unusual color (kind of a steel gray / blueish color) that this shop matched perfectly. They even blended when Ed didn't want them to..They told him that they knew best and just let them work! If he didn't like it, no problem, they would fix it. It looked perfect. Another neat thing is if you read their mission page, they state right in there that they will only use genuine parts.

 

Ok so, I haven't had a chance to go to Carusos But I did take the car to what everyone around here says is the best body shop. This place is a Mercedes Benz Certified Collision repair center, and does all the work for the local Porsche and Mercedes dealer.

I'm attaching the preliminary estimate - our printer scanner copier deluxe thing at work only scans in pdf format.. There's probably more pending tear down, as he said he really can't see underneath the bumper, and getting the car on the alignment rack.

Everything seems fine and all OEM parts are spec'd / priced. Except for one thing: He wants to repair the denting in the trunk, so the car will have at least a skim coat of body filler in that area. I asked him about replacing the trunk with new metal, and he was like there's no way to justify it even if I wanted too, the damage just isn't that severe.

What do you guys think about the trunk situation? And is there anything I'm missing?